Sunday, 6 February 2011

Once again wasting time

Here I am again, with my final exam drawing ever closer, writing another blog post and once again just generally wasting time.

I often find myself scouring blogs or Wikipedia for things that interest me. It will start out with an interest in a certain subject or topic and I will find myself clicking link after link, and going off on tangents; I end up reading about things that are not at all related to the initial topic, but none the less interesting. I can often spend hours doing this; hours some would say much better spent revising or working, but not to me. I can never see a thirst for knowledge as a waste of time, for by increasing your own knowledge base you are bettering yourself (or at least that's how I justify it to myself!).

It was by this that I came across a post talking about a book by Neil Fiore about procrastination (a topic well known by me!). Instead of attributing it to laziness that can simply be cured by a good old fashion dose of hard work, he delves deeper into the psychology of it. He associates procrastination as a mechanism for coping with anxiety, especially that stemming from starting or completing a task. He sees it as a method of resisting pressure from authorities, as a method of lessoning fear of failure by providing you with a decent excuse for poor performance; you simply didn't try very hard.

I find this idea intriguing and when applied to myself probably largely true. I often put off work and keep putting it off until the pressure truly mounts and I find myself rushing frantically, reprimanding myself for not starting sooner. Yet despite this, I never learn and will continue with this behaviour every time after. I have always been one who did well in school, doing well in my GCSEs with minimal effort and well in A-Levels without increasing that effort level. However this started to cause problems when I hit uni and the work became significantly harder, yet my effort levels didn't increase. In fact I probably now find more things to distract myself with.

Is all this a bad thing? Probably. Will I regret not working harder later in life? Quite possibly, but for now it is exactly what I wanted so I hold no regrets.

As the English philosopher Bertrand Russell once said - "the time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time" an adage I choose to live by.

I know, I know its odd really. Anything like uni work (exam revision, coursework) I just put off. However any time I have an actual job I focus solely on doing my work and doing it well (a bit of a perfectionist really). And I spent a year in industry working for Xerox so at a proper 9-5 job with a salary. It seems that when its for my benefit alone I just can't be bothered, weird I know.

It's amazing how wikipedia articles can draw you in with their knowledge. I often find myself spending hours reading there as well. Just live the way you live and be happy with yourself! :) though it is extremely hard breaking out of normal cycles.